Posted on 05/04/2009 2:47:58 PM PDT by ChrisInAR
As most of you already know, the Tax Day Tea Parties were a huge success in terms of number of gatherings (over 850) and total numbers participating (over 1 million according to some sources). From what I observed both in person at our Appleton, Wisconsin Tax Day Tea Party and online at various websites, the Tax Day Tea Parties were, for the most part, a genuine grassroots phenomenon. Just the diversity of signs showed that no one person or organization had planned the messages on the highly individualistic signs.
This spontaneous, grassroots nature of the tea party rallies was the most encouraging aspect of them. At last a broad cross-section of America had had enough with fiscal irresponsibility and excessive, inflationary spending, not to mention exorbitantly high taxes, and felt compelled to gather together in public places to protest out-of-control state and federal governments and the legislators of both parties who brought this problem about in the first place.
Nonetheless, less than two weeks after the tax day rallies, backers of a very dangerous threat to our Constitution have surfaced, and are actively working to have their agenda adopted by the Tea Party Movement’s grassroots organizers. This dangerous threat to our Constitution is none other than that perennial temptation, the constitutional convention, also known widely as a con-con.
A Constitutional Convention is a horrible idea.
It is not needed.
It can not be controlled.
It will be the end of our country.
Birchers are as much a threat to this Republic as are liberals.
The last thing we need is to let our clown car congress get in and start “tweaking” our constitution.
A constitutional convention is a great idea ... when conservatives (not Republicans) have taken back the White House and a substantial majority in both houses of Congress. Otherwise, FORGET IT.
I agree. Con-con 2 is a bad idea that has been around since the 1980’s.
This can't be allowed to hurt the movement!
Boolhockey!
I say FORGET IT regardless of whether conservatives, neo-cons, or liberals are in power. Like the article said in its last paragraph, why don't we return to the ORIGINAL Constitution & renew our respect for Original Intent???
I have been to a few Tea Parties and the Third Party loons
have hijacked them with their 9/11 Truther, pushing their candidates, etc.
The purpose of the Tea Party is lost with these wack jobs
How so? Please explain.
We don’t need to change the constitution, we need to observe and abide by the constitution.
That's actually a point in favor of a Con-con. It would not be Congress writing the amendments. But I agree that such an assembly could not be limited. IF it could, and IF it was limited to repealing the 16th and 17th amendments, adding term limits for Congress, and instituting "continuance" elections for Federal Judges, including the Supreme Court, I'd be all for it. The Continuance elections would only be a minor modification, since the Constitution as it is now provides that Judges serve "during good behavior". The elections would be how "good behavior" was determined.
Congress will NEVER repeal their own power to tax the people directly, they will never put term limits on themselves, and the Senate will never vote to give the power to choose Senators back to the states. It's also highly unlikely they'd give up their exclusive power to determine the "good behavior" of federal judges (via impeachment and conviction in the Senate). So how else would those changes ever get made, except by the "other" amendment process?
At some point, the Constitution will have lived and breathed itself to death, at the hands of Justices, Congressmen and Presidents. We're pretty close to that now. It needs to truly live, as intended, by being amended, rather than be ignored and/or twisted to mean what it clearly did not when written.
But, I reluctantly agree, that now is not the time.
I disagree with the fear of a constitutional convention.
To begin with, the JBS were right in opposing a CC for the purposes of ratifying a single amendment. A CC should be reserved for *only* a major reorganization of the federal government of the United States, and then only when our existing government has failed to the point where our nation faces disaster.
Unfortunately, today, our federal government has failed beyond this point.
It has indebted our nation far beyond the ability of generations to repay—leaving no choice but the default of our national debt.
Beyond that, it has promised five times that debt in unconstitutional largesse—leaving no choice but the default of those promises as well.
And beyond that, it has created economic contrivances and schemes with domestic and foreign plutocrats, and foreign powers, whose eventual purpose is inevitably the loss of our national sovereignty.
The federal government has unconstitutionally taken *most* of the lands West of the Mississippi, not for any use, but to deny their use to their proper owners, the individual States and the people.
Further it has impressed upon the individual States onerous and illegal laws and regulations, often redundant on their own laws to claim superior jurisdiction, and demanded that the individual States pay for such whimsical rules by unelected bureaucrats and judicial masters.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
And while there is great trepidation that a Constitutional Convention could be abused, by the same scoundrels who have already brought down on us the need for this dissolution, we must trust in faith that in their wisdom, the individual States will put forth pairs of delegates who are respectful and responsible men, and that they, in closed convention, out of the grasp or control of those responsible in large part for our dilemma, will create for the people and the individual States a revised US Constitution, more in accordance with its original intent.
Yes, it is a frightening prospect. But though our nation will be pushed to the brink to call forth a Constitutional Convention, when the time comes, we will have little choice in the matter. For without a Constitutional Convention, we will no longer have a constitution, much less a nation.
That is at best an ignorant statement.
Those that have attacked the Birch Society are the very greatest threat to world wide freedom. They are the same destroyers that attacked and demonized Senator McCarthy.
Congress is not as much of a problem as the states WRT a convention.
The country is no longer well enough educated to take such a chance. Ignorance of history is our enemy.
Congress is not as much of a problem as the states WRT a convention.
The country is no longer well enough educated to take such a chance. Ignorance of history is our enemy.
That's one of the main points of the article, + the fact that those who support a constitutional convention are trying to take over the tea party movement.
“”Birchers are as much a threat to this Republic as are liberals.”
That is at best an ignorant statement.
Those that have attacked the Birch Society are the very greatest threat to world wide freedom. They are the same destroyers that attacked and demonized Senator McCarthy.””
Yeah, ol’ Bill Buckley was SUCH a demonizer of McCarthy.
/s
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